Kurt Lewin (an important influence on social psychology) once said
"There's
nothing so useful as a good theory." And, as long as you never
lose
sight of reality, it's quite true.

The problem in social psychology (and in psychology generally) is
that
there is no one agreed-upon theory! So, in order to give you
something
to help organize your ideas, I've pulled together a number of ideas
into
a theory for "in-the-meantime."

Basically, this theory looks at human experience as a matter of
interaction
between the world and the self. At its simplest, the world gives
us events; we in turn give those events meaning by interpreting and
acting
upon them.

There are some obvious details here: sensations (input from
the
world, stimuli) and actions (output to the world, responses).
There
was a time when psychologists thought this was enough. Now we
know
better, and we add two more details, which I will call anticipation and
adaptation.

Anticipation is a little difficult to explain. We have a
certain
knowledge of the world, a "model" of it. This model includes
everything
from little details like which shoe you put on first to complex things
like how you feel about yourself and your life. We use this model
to anticipate -- expect, predict -- what will happen in the next moment
or in the next ten years.

If I close my eyes, I expect that when I open them you will still be
there, the room will still be there, I will still be there, and so
on.
If all you of you were to disappear on me I would be seriously
surprised.

If I keep my eyes closed and focus on the expectation, rather than
on
you and the world "out there," I can imagine you. We can
understand
images and thoughts as anticipations temporarily detached from the
stream
of events!

We also anticipate on a more long term basis: We have
expectations
about what college will and won't do for us, about love being forever,
and the sun rising, and so on.

Adaptation is also more difficult to explain. Sometimes, we
don't
anticipate well. For example, you think you see a friend coming
at
you and you prepare to give a hearty "hi!" but just as you raise your
arm
to wave and begin to open your mouth, you realize it's not your friend
at all but a complete stranger. (If possible, you convert the
raised
arm into a back-scratch, and the open mouth into a yawn. If it's
too late and you've already said hi, just pretend you know them.
This will drive them crazy.)

Whenever you make mistakes, you need to figure out what went wrong,
what to do about it, how to make sense of it. As you do, you are
improving your understanding of the world and your relation to it; you
are improving your "model." This is adaptation. In our
example,
you may now have a model of the world that includes look-alikes,
embarrassing
mistakes, and a tendency to hold-off a little in the future before
being
so exuberant with your hello's. Adaptation is learning.

This additional layer to interaction of anticipation and adaptation
is crucial: It means that our behaviors and experiences are
not
just a function of some common reality. We, ourselves, our
understandings
of reality, are inevitably and intrinsically a part of our behaviors
and
experiences. Without "self," reality would be meaningless.

Take a look at this drawing. An infant is likely to react to
this
by sticking pieces in his or her mouth. A young child may see
them
as little people or "finger-clickers." An adult who does not play
chess may see them as chess pieces on a board. When asked
what
the two pieces in the foreground are, they might say they are
castles.
A beginning chess player would call them rooks, and might add that the
white bishop can take the black queen (or vice versa). They "see"
the moves of the pieces, the rules of the game. A good chess
player
might note that it is mate in one (or two) moves for black. None
of these is wrong; they are simply different meanings applied to
the same events.

You might ask: What is the event really? But what do you
mean by that? “Really” to whom? Somebody must always do the
seeing, give the meaning. A physical scientist looking at the
pieces
and noting their chemical compositions is still giving his or her
meaning
to the event.

Note, of course, that the "board" is 6 by 6 instead of 8 by 8, that
there is no black king, which means there is no game going on, and that
in fact this is a drawing -- a set of lines -- and not a set of
three-dimensional
objects at all. All of this is an indication of how much our
interpretations
add to what is "really" there.

So, in order to understand and predict and control people's
experiences
and behaviors, we have to understand the meanings they apply to
reality.
No easy trick.

Social Interaction

All the preceding has been quite general and not particularly
social.
Well, among the events that we give meaning to are other people--very
significant
events. Often we treat people exactly as we treat other
events:
abusing them, ignoring them, taking them for granted.... You've
all
felt it, I'm sure: being treated like a thing instead of a
person.
But more often, I like to believe, we treat people as something
more:
We treat them as meaning-giving creatures like ourselves, as
people.
This is social interaction.

Think about what this means: I have to operate not only in my
own "meaning system," but in yours as well, and you have to operate in
mine. In order to deal with you, I have to know a little about
your
mind as well as my own, and you have to know a little about mine.
We recognize this every time we talk about "psyching each other out" or
when we say "I see where you're coming from!"

If you like definitions, I must warn you that psychologists seldom
agree
on things. But if we can agree that psychology is the study of
behavior
and experience, then social psychology is the study of social behavior
and experience. That is, it is the study of our behavior and
experience
when faced with other people.

I must add one more point in defining social psychology: Since
we give the world meaning, we can give it social meaning when it suits
us. This means we wind up engaging in social interaction in the
absence
of other people! We obey traffic signals (some of us) on empty
streets
in the middle of the night; we laugh or cry with characters in books or
figures on a screen; we respond to the works of artists hundreds, even
thousands of years dead.... In other words, social interaction
includes
behavior and experience in the implied or symbolic presence of others,
as well as in their actual presence.

We could go on, adding and subtracting and rearranging words in the
search for a perfect definition. Instead, let's move on and let
the
contents of the course do for a definition.

AFFECT

So far, our theory is rather cold and mechanical. What about
feelings?
Well, they're there, to some degree, in every interaction.

Imagine this: In the middle of the night, you get a bad case
of
the mad munchies. So you leave your bed and head for the
fridge.
It's very dark, but you know your apartment like the back of your hand,
so you don't bother with the lights. The coffee table is in the
middle
of the room and you anticipate its presence and maneuver around
it.
Perhaps you reach out your hand to touch the edge to confirm your
anticipation.
You're almost there -- five more feet to the fridge -- when WHAM! you
walk
into a solid six foot...something: The unanticipated!

What do you feel at that moment? Perhaps fear, surprise,
perhaps
sheer terror. Whatever it is, it is rather unpleasant.
Let's
call it distress.

You are, at the same time, busy "generating anticipations" -- making
guesses about the nature of the beast, taking actions that might
alleviate
some of your fears, dashing for the light switch. The lights come
on... you're expecting a sex-crazed psycho-killer....

And lo and behold, it's the fridge. You cleaned behind it for
the first time in 30 years and left it pulled out. Now how do you
feel?

Perhaps you feel relief, a sensation of pleasant resolution.
You
heave a great sigh, perhaps laugh. Things make sense again.
Life is on the right path again. Let's call it delight.

(Note that you might still feel some negative emotion as well, as
soon
as the initial relief is behind you -- like annoyance at your own
stupidity.
That problem has yet to be resolved!)

Another example: Notice the people coming off one of the
"sooper-dooper"
roller coasters. Notice their frozen smiles. That's their
way
of saying "yes! I am alive!"

Let's be more precise: When interaction is problematic, we
feel
distress. For example, (1) when we fail to anticipate
something--like
the fridge in our face--we are distressed.

We also feel distress when (2) we anticipate more than one thing at
the same time: conflicting anticipations. Which of your
roommates
is actually the chain-saw killer? Each time you are alone with
one
of them, you don't know whether to feel secure or to run like the
blazes.

And (3) we also feel it when we are faced by general
uncertainty:
Which way is that cockroach, or rat, or snake going to move next?
Perhaps this is the root of our common phobias of these delightful
creatures.

Distress can be mild, an irritation or annoyance: When your
pen
runs out of ink just as you sign a check at the local supermarket.

It can be a bit more intense: The frustration of you car
breaking
down; the fear as your car careens out of control on the highway; the
disgust
you feel when you discover that your lover bites the heads off of live
chickens.

Delight is the resolution of our distressful problems. We are,
actually, developing or elaborating our understanding of the world when
we feel delight. Delight is the emotional side of adaptation, of
(believe it or not!) learning.

It too can be mild: The pleasant feeling of finishing a
crossword
puzzle or winning at a game or sport. Or it can be a bit more
intense,
like the relief you feel when you realize that the roller-coaster only
felt like it was leaving the tracks; or the joy of scientific
discovery,
artistic creation, or mystical experience.

Notice that since solving problems requires having problems, delight
depends on distress. Even physical pleasure seems to work like
this:
You enjoy it more after doing without it for a while, whether "it" is
food,
drink, or sex! Too much of it, and it doesn't seem to satisfy
quite
so well. (Note that our response to this is often to try doing it
even more! Hence some of our neurotic attitudes towards sex,
food,
gambling, attention....)

Facing a problem doesn't cause distress -- it is distress. The
distress is just the feeling-side of the situation. The same
points
apply to delight. It isn't caused by problem-resolution, it is
problem-resolution.
And distress and delight don't cause you to seek a solution; they are
not
"motivating forces."

But there's no doubt that the situations in which you feel distress
may be ones that you avoid in the future. Or, if they resulted in
delight, they may be ones you seek out in the future. It is the
anticipation
of distress or delight that is motivating.

Anxiety is the distressful anticipation of distress. From
experience,
you expect that the situation before you will be unpleasant. This
expectation is itself unpleasant: it conflicts with your desire
to
be a happy, carefree individual. And, often, you try to avoid the
situation.

Hope is the delightful anticipation of delight. From
experience,
the problem before you will be resolved, and this is a happy
thought.
Depending on details, we could also call this eagerness, or even
anxiety,
as in "I'm anxious to get started!"

Now, the "basic" distress and delight don't usually happen at the
same
time--since one is the problem and the other the solution. But
anticipatory
distress and delight -- that is, anxiety and hope -- often happen at
the
same time: We call this "mixed emotions."

Skimming across deep water on little sticks at 30 miles per hour can
make you nervous; water-skiing, on the other hand, sounds like
fun.
You feel both anxiety and eagerness. You decision whether to try
it will be based on how these two balance out for you. Notice I
said
"for you." The decision is very much a subjective one, based on
what
makes you anxious and eager.

Anticipation can also help us make sense of other emotions, like
this:

Anger is distress with an expectation of external change. The
problem is "out there" and anger is the build-up of energy needed to
solve
it. Just try to hold back a baby from crawling, and see what you
get.

Sadness is distress with an expectation of internal change.
The
problem is "in here." I realize that I must adapt to it.
Grief
is the most obvious example: You can't get them back; you can
only
learn to live with their absence. Many of our major learning
experiences
involve sadness, such as coming to understand our own limitations, or
the
limitations of our loved ones, for example.

Notice that anger is a little more hopeful; sadness is a little
harder
to take. People tend to be angry at things before they settle
down
to accept what they can't change. That says something very
important
about us: We resist major changes in the self; if we can, we try
to make the world fit our expectations.

Sometimes people persist in these emotional states. A person
who
is always trying to make the world -- especially others -- fit his
expectations
we call aggressive, and his emotional state hostile.. Often, what
he really needs to do is change himself, adapt. But for some
reason
-- his culture, for example -- giving-in is taboo. Like physical
pleasures, when it doesn't work right, we do what we always do, only
more!

Likewise, a person who is always trying to make himself fit the
world
-- and especially others' expectations -- we call compliant and his
emotional
state is commonly depressed.. He is always trying to adjust
himself
to others, when often what he needs is to get angry.

In our society, we see some differences between men and women in
this
area: Men have typically been taught from childhood on that
giving-in
is bad; women have been taught that being pushy is bad. So men
are
more likely to get stuck in aggressive patterns, and women in compliant
patterns. Of course, it doesn't have to be this way, and often
enough
it's reversed. But ideally, we should all, men and women alike,
"give-in"
when that makes sense, and be "pushy" when that makes sense!

Most common of all is avoidance: When we see a problem coming,
we give in to our anxiety and run away, physically or
psychologically.
With avoidance, we are really trying to get out of an emotional
situation
and back into a peaceful state. Unfortunately, if you avoid
problems
and their distress, you also avoid the delight of solutions.
Think
of some of the common "psychological" ways we avoid life's
problems:
Alcohol, drugs, television. The goal of avoidance is to be
unconscious,
or at least unconscious of problems.

These three "types" -- aggressive, compliant, and avoiding -- are so
common that a number of theorists have independently come up with them
(Adler, Horney, Fromm, and others). These types may even have a
genetic
component to them, so that some of us are more likely to deal with our
problems by turning to aggression, others with compliance, still others
with avoidance.

A more mature person tends to take on problems with an eye towards
their
solution: They face distress and anxiety with hope and eagerness.

This takes a little something--an ability to focus on your goals,
and
to ignore the pains of getting there. This has been called
will-power,
self-discipline, need for achievement, and
delay-of-gratification.
I just call it will. We will come back to this idea later.

MOTIVATION

In this section, we move from questions about what we feel to
questions
about what we want. As I said earlier, the "self" is what gives
things
their meaning. Some philosophers and psychologists suggest that
the
only thing that makes a person (or any living creature) different from
a mechanical device is that a person gives things meaning.

We give things meaning because we have desires. Because of
desire,
some things have value to us, and some don't; some are relevant to us,
some are not; and value or relevance is just another way of
talking
about meaning.

Behaviorists and other theorists who take a fairly biological
approach
to social psychology suggest that our desires all boil down to the
desire
to survive. So our most fundamental needs are for food, water,
rest,
and the avoidance of pain. More complex motivations are seen as
derived
from these by learning.

Freudians have a similar view, and refer to desire as libido.
They, however, focus more on the need to survive beyond the
individual's
life-span through reproduction. Since the survival of all needs
and
the instincts that serve them in fact depends on reproduction, it is
quite
reasonable to make sex the key desire!

Humanists use the word actualization, which means "the desire to
maintain
and enhance the self." So "maintenance" certainly includes
survival,
as long as it is understood that we are referring to the survival of
the
psychological self as well as the physical self. And
"enhancement"
means we do more than just try to survive.

For example, most "lower" animals react to problems and learn from
their
mistakes. But "higher" animals have certain extra desires -- such
as curiosity -- that encourage them to learn about potential problems
before
any serious mistakes happen. Kittens and puppies and human
children
are notorious for this kind of "enhancement." It is sometimes
referred
to as competence motivation.

Social creatures such as ourselves rely on each other for much of
their
"maintenance and enhancement." One thing we need, especially
early
in our lives, is positive regard, meaning attention, affection,
etc.
At first, it's a matter of physical survival; later in life, it's
a sign that we have support around us.

Human beings take this need a step further: Because we have an
internal mental life (thanks to anticipation, etc.), we can internalize
both the need we have for positive regard and its satisfaction or
non-satisfaction.
In other words, we have a desire and need for positive self-regard,
also
known as self-respect, self-worth, or self-esteem.

Poor self-esteem -- the inferiority complex -- is one of the most
common
sources for psychological problems a therapist finds. Most of us
have these complexes about one thing or another: looks,
intelligence,
strength, social skills, etc. Even the bully , the beauty, and
the
braggart -- people with superiority complexes -- can be understood as
people
with poor self-esteem!

I would like to suggest that all these motivations are real and
relevant
to understanding people. And we can differ with each other in
regards
to what motivates each of us: Some of us "live to eat;" others
are
"sex fiends;" others are curious to a fault; others are "people
people;"
and others still are driven by ego; and so on!

"Inertia"

Another aspect of motivation that is hard to overestimate, and yet
is
rarely discussed at all, is "inertia." If you think about it,
nearly
all of the things we've been talking about involve returning to a
unstressed
state. When we talk about physical needs, for example, we often
talk
about homeostasis: like a thermostat that controls a furnace, we eat
when
we are low on nutrients, we stop eating when we have enough.

The same thing applies to psychological phenomena: When our
understanding
of things is lacking and we fail to anticipate, we scramble to improve
our understanding; once we understand something, and our anticipations
are right on target, we are satisfied. In fact, it almost seems
that
we spend our lives trying to be unconscious! After all, we feel
distress
when things go wrong and delight when things improve, but neither when
things are going just right.

Things that are thoroughly learned are unconscious. Concerning
small behaviors, we call them habits. Brushing your teeth, for
example:
Odds are that you brush them in pretty much the same way every day, as
if you were playing-out a program.

When they concern social behaviors, we call them rituals.
Coronations,
marriage ceremonies, funerals, standing on line, taking turns when
talking,
saying "hello, how are you," whether you want to know or not -- all are
examples of rituals.

There are also ways of thinking and perceiving that are so
thoroughly
learned we tend not to be conscious of them: attitudes, mind-sets,
norms,
prejudices, defenses, and so on.

The key to identifying habits and rituals is that the acts are
essentially
emotionless (hence unconscious). Mind you, things “around" the
habit
or ritual may be emotional (i.e. a funeral!), but the things done are
done
rather automatically -- like driving a car, once you've caught on --
until
things go wrong!

When that happens, you experience some kind of distress. Go
ahead,
tell someone who asks "how are you" all about how you really are!
Or stand the wrong way in an elevator. Or interrupt the smooth
flow
of a restaurant (e.g. by taking peoples' orders, "to help out").
This is called Garfinkling, after Harold Garfinkle, who invented
it.
It will reveal rules of behavior that are so ritualized that we've
forgotten
they exist.

Anyway, maintaining things the way they are, keeping social "law and
order," is an extremely powerful motivation. In its most positive
form, it's our desire for peace and contentment. In its most
negative
form, it is our resistance to anything new or different.

Higher motivations

At the other end of the spectrum are what we might call higher
motivations,
such as creativity and compassion.

There are times when we are, for a moment, "transported outside
ourselves,"
or, to put it another way, when we feel an identity with something
greater
than ourselves. Many people experience these moments when they
stand
at the rim of the Grand Canyon for the first time, or walk into one of
the great cathedrals of Europe for the first time. The ocean, the
acropolis,
sequoias, hummingbirds, music, even a great book or movie can do this
as
well. We could call it a peak, spiritual, or mystical experience,
or just call it awe.

This kind of thing also happens with certain behaviors.
Mountain
climbers talk about the flow experience (see Czentimihalyi), when their
minds are fully occupied with the task at hand and they become "one
with
the mountain." Dancers, actors, musicians, and athletes mention
similar
experiences of involvement.

Creative activities can also give us these feelings. Artists,
musicians, writers, scientists, and crafts people talk about a point at
which their are led by their creation, rather than the other way
around.

And we feel it when we truly love someone, when they become more
important
than ourselves. Albert Schweitzer said that only those who serve
can be truly happy. This is called compassion.

In all these examples, we see not just "maintenance and enhancement
of self" but a transcendence of self, a loss of self that paradoxically
leads to an expansion of self. Most religions and philosophies
make
these their highest values.

Freedom

There is something very peculiar about people: While, from an
outside view, it may seem as if our behaviors were being completely
determined
by the various forces that bear down on us -- genetics, the physical
world,
social pressures -- we seem to be capable of "pulling back" now and
then,
for a moment or two, from the stream of events. We can pause to
reflect
on things. And we can imagine and think about things that aren't
immediately present.

For example: Sometimes one part of us -- say our inherited
physiology
-- wants sexual gratification, and wants it now. Another part of
us -- say our social upbringing -- wants respect, safety, virtue,
affection,
or whatever. If we were completely determined, we would simply go
with the stronger force, and life would be easy. Instead, we have
the ability to weigh the forces.

Sometimes this is a less-than-fully conscious process. We can
weigh two forces emotionally, in terms of the relative anxiety and
eagerness.
But we can step back a bit and add certain rational considerations, and
consider things like the meaning of sin, the odds of getting caught, or
whether the urge will go away if you ignore it. Worrying about
things
this way may be unpleasant, but it is a sign of our freedom to choose!

We can also create new options. Only people deal in
possibilities
as well as realities! When things seem to be a matter of
either-or,
damned if you do and damned if you don't, we can pause, and reflect,
and
create a third -- or fourth, or fifth... -- choice.

Even when alternatives seem totally absent, some freedom
remains.
The writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, after being faced with
Gestapo
torture, discovered that he could always say no! You at very
least
have a choice of the attitude you will take towards your suffering,
hard
though it may be.

All this is very frustrating to anyone looking for a hard science of
social psychology. Much of the time we are as determined as
falling
bricks. But at our best, we don't follow "laws of human behavior"
-- we create ourselves!